Conventional relational database systems are often capable of storing, organizing, and/or processing large amounts of data. As an example, relational database systems may be capable of storing, organizing, and/or processing many millions or billions of records. In these systems, data organization is vital to the processing efficiency of the database system. Data organization within the relational database system is particularly important in relational database systems that execute relatively complex queries and other commands involving relatively large amounts of data.
In a typical relational database system, relationships are used to breakdown the data into simpler structures for storage in one or more data-storage devices. As a result, related information may be stored and distributed over multiple data-storage devices. In most cases, before a relational database system can process a query, the relational database system must redistribute the data so that it may be processed and/or correlated according to the received query.